Something New (This Week) vol 27
featuring Elia Kazan, Dashiell Hammett, David Lynch
Welcome to Something New (This Week), a (sometimes) weekly installation of recommendations for movies, music, readings, and more.
It’s Martin Luther King Jr.’s holiday weekend. I think about Jonathan Eig’s biography of King nearly every day, as the large book and its punchy cover and spine design catch my eye on my bookshelf whenever I walk passed. It is one of my favorite biographies ever, and I think you should read it. If you live in the PNW, come borrow it sometime.
There’s a lot going on in the world, and there’s not a lot of escapes downloaded onto my phone right now, which has created a rock and a hard place for my free time usage. It’s not that hard. It has led me to make better choices with my media consumption, and I have been taking in some of the best movies back-to-back-to-back-to-back, and I’m reading dense, educational, rewarding non-fiction, as well as timeless wind-down-time fiction.
Here are some of those things, that I strongly recommend:
A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan, 1957)
Elia Kazan‘s film is the story of an everyday yokel having their talents discovered, and being shoved in front of a magic box that will let everyone in America see them. The results are inflammatory and uncontrollable, as the result of celebrity and rapidly rising power always seem to be. The film is prescient and horrifying, and a particularly great reminder that time is a flat circle, but it is also a showcase for how something that we think would be improving with time (and with the expansion of technology) are actually deteriorating. In the film, our brazen personality – played beautifully by Andy Griffith – is a real person with real charm and real insight and intelligence. We do not fault Marcia, our heroin, for falling in with his lot, nor falling for his need of her. We know she is smart, and we know he isn’t to be trusted, but we get it. When Griffith’s character rises and reaches beyond a simple TV screen, into the ears of elected officials, we see that he knows what he’s doing, he knows what people genuinely connect with, and he understands how he can influence them. He understands how to leverage that singular power into more status and more reach for himself. If our current elected officials, God forbid the president or the president-elect, had half of this character’s, personality, or intellectual capabilities, we would be better off. The -elect already have his bad intentions, and his greed, and his lust. I just wish politicians had reached their positions by earning them with discernible talents. Most of them have not.
This is a beautiful movie, wonderfully directed. Elia Kazan, who was deep into political messaging and the power of a phrase or an image1, is a great choice to helm this project. The script is dynamite and you can tell that Kazan is mostly staying out of its way. When he does decide to show his own influence upon the picture, in image making and in character staging, it is impactful. Patricia Neil gives a believable and heartbreaking performance, and is maybe the hottest person I have ever seen on screen? She is magnificent, she is tragic, she is comedic. Every performer here nails it. Anthony François, who plays Griffith’s agent who creates the bridge to get Griffith to New York and beyond, is sleazy and delightful. Walter Mathau is a surprisingly convincing intellectual who genuinely supports Neil in her bone-headed following of Griffith’s demagogue. Sidekicks and dupes and phony politicians and many others fill these pages with real substance.
While watching this movie, I was struck — for maybe the 15th time in my life — by just how powerful and effective and entertaining that these 80-year-old movies frequently are. Every day, we stay further from God’s (Alfred Hitchcock’s) light. But thankfully, we can look back and grab onto something that still radiates.
You can watch A Face in the Crowd on the Criterion Channel, on Amazon Prime, or rental.
The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett, 1934)
I’m running low on available copies of new (to me) Ross Thomas novels, which I am attempting to read all of. That has created a crime/mystery/detective novel vacuum in my reading life, which I am currently filling with Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man, a book that started as a pure detective story set in San Francisco. Hammett abandoned it, and later refashioned it as a comedy of manners set at Christmas in New York, 1932.
Fronted by former private investigator Nick Charles and his socialite wife Nora, the story revolves around a murder of a scientist’s secretary, and it ensnares many people in Nick and Nora’s personal life, which means it ensnares them, as well. They’re game for the challenge. Bouncing around New York, grabbing a drink between and throughout every conversation, these two navigate the messy affairs of gangsters, divorcing couples, daughters and sons, low lifes and high lifes. The comedy leads the experience, rather than the mystery, and the novel is a breezy and warming read. It is the first Hammett I have read, and was the fifth of five that he ever wrote. He seems like a fine candidate for a completionist read-though.
Hammet was also a major player in Hollywood, and had lasting connections to the “red scare” in American politics. He would also be summoned to testify, as Eliza Kazan was, but pleaded the fifth amendment in response to every question. He was found guilty of contempt of court, and imprisoned. I’m reading about him, and much more, in the great book “CITY OF NETS: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940's” by Otto Friedrich. It’s a great history book that has very enjoyable prose.
The book was quickly turned into a movie, so quick that it was in theaters within five months of the novel’s publishing in 1934. The film was beloved, and spawned five sequels – the first two written by Hammett. The movie, and it’s lead characters, also inspired “the King of Cocktails” Dale DeGroff to reclaim the style of glassware –the “Little Martini” glass – that Nick and Nora can be seen using. DeGroff started using them in his bar, and called them “Nick and Nora” glasses. They are now commonly found all over the world, and, I might add, a delightful glass to use in your home.
I got my hands on a copy through my local library. I’m sure you could do the same. You could go looking for it at used bookstores, which is a great place to spend your time. You can also buy it from ThriftBooks.com, where I do most of my online book purchasing these days.
The movie is available to rent digitally.
The music of David Lynch
This past Friday, I was lucky to catch an hour of NTS Radio programming dedicated to David Lynch, who died last Thursday. Lynch’s music appreciation and tastes were vast and varied, and, most importantly, pretty different from mine. That makes him a wonderful wellspring of sounds and discoveries. Sound plays a vital role in his films and television, and he produced some of the scariest, impactful, precise soundscapes you’ll ever have paired with your visual mediums.
I found a couple playlists on Spotify, and will paste one here, but I also hope to create and sequence a playlist of my own when I allow myself back on the platform next month. If I manage to pull it off, I’ll share it somewhere.
Rest weird, David.
Thank you, as always, for reading. A quick reminder that being a well-informed American does not require you watching every bit of news, or to refresh news pages more than twice a day. Try turning that yearning for information towards a classic novel, or a 1970’s documentary, or a regional cookbook, or to a new craft like architectural sketching. Eat well, use your time well, and sleep well. You’ll do just fine.
TTFN,
Bobby
Soundtrack for writing this piece
Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders - “Promises” - 2021 (Spotify)
Meaningful Stone - “Angel Interview” - 2024 (Spotify)
Kazan, when summoned by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1952, was a “friendly witness”, naming colleagues who previously identified as Communists. He lost many friends and much respect for doing so.